They sent out a field service guy who found that our modem was tuned off the band needed and that the signal strength was weak. The service guy tuned the modem and then discovered that their connection cable was bad. He fixed it and we were "knees up". It's amazing how quickly new technology becomes part of life's necessities.
Before we left for a play on Sunday afternoon, I checked out the waterfront. I had read there was to be a steam driven tug out and about and I wanted a picture. What I found was the river full of dragon boats, having a regatta. As I understand, dragon boats are Hawaiian - what a strange world we live in
Getting to the theater for the play was another adventure in Bristol buses. This was a new route into a new part of town. We started in Bristol Centre and went north. The advertisement for the playhad a map with it, but I should have expected trouble when I found that the map's north pointed to the left of the page. We looked it up on our good city map, but like everywhere else we've ever gone, the target was on the crease of the page. We showed the bus driver our advertisement map and he was very good about telling us when we got there. If we had taken his suggested stop we would have had to walk a mile and a half. Fortunately, I was following our progress on our carry-around map and I may not have known exactly where we were going but I did know we weren't there yet.
We got off the bus at the right stop, but picked the wrong direction to walk. Ended up going down a long hill before we reversed directions and got it right. We got to the theater in time.
Monday we did a trip downtown to see about getting Nancy's reading glasses fixed. The shop was able to replace the one broken earpiece. While we waited we had lunch at a "Burger King." There seem to be more Burger Kings here than "McDonalds." Good ole American food - yummy!
One thing of interest here is called ASBO or the "anti-social behavior order." We are all aware of the changes in law enforcement as a result of ?"he attack on 9/11". England took similar measures but in addition England has had problems with rowdy footballers, unruly teenagers, underage drinking and other behaviors that could be considered anti-social. The present laws and procedures don't seem adequate to handle these situations. So, Tony Blair's government has issued this ASBO. This order gives local government the authority to take whatever steps it feels are necessary to curtail what it considers anti-social behavior. Recently a woman was cited under the "order" for making threatening phone calls to her neighbors.
As you can imagine, this "order" has caused an uproar among the very people that it was meant to control. They say that their "civil rights" are being abused. We have less trouble with implementing laws to control behavior in the US because of the local governments' ability to adapt its own laws as needed. England's laws start at the central government and work their way down to the local levels. In the US most laws start at the local level. It will be interesting to watch. Someday England will have as many laws as the US - well, maybe as many as half as many.
When we left home, we were just about out of aspirin - no big deal. Since we got here, we've been in lots of stores looking for a big bottle of aspirin and the only thing we've found is very small vacuum packs of a dozen or so aspirin per pack. The other day at the big grocery store we bought three of these small packs to tide us over until we could find a bigger bottle. The clerk stopped and said that she "couldn't do it" - there is a limit on the amount of aspirin that can be sold at one time. So, we bought two packages. Strange.
The weather here has been a little unpleasant for the last week and a half to two weeks. The last three or four days it's been downright nasty. We've had high winds and when the rains come, they come by the bucket load. The daytime temperature has been in the sixties and the nighttime in the forties. The long range forecast gives us some hope that maybe, just maybe, we'll see some improvement by the middle of next week.
The good news is that spring has progressed in spite of the weather and there are flowers everywhere. To add to the flowers, the shrubs and trees that can, are adding their blooms. It's beautiful. The plants that don't bloom are growing like crazy, so some of the areas are a little shaggy. We reported earlier that the grass wasn't growing very fast, so the daffodils could show. Well, the daffodil blossoms are spent and the grass has grown to knee high. The grass can't be cut without damaging the daffodils - more shagginess
Thursday night we went to see Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" at the "Old Vic". The Old Vic really is old and has been continuously producing plays for 240 years. The inside is very ornate and beautiful, but people 240 years ago were smaller and didn't know about air conditioning. There was no leg room and as soon as the lights went out and they closed the back doors, the temperature zoomed to what felt like over 100 degrees.
We are very familiar with the play, having seen it several times; plus the musical "Kiss Me Kate" is based on this play. The set were very simple but elegant, the costumes were modern and the language "Shakespearian" but with a British accent. I got lost a couple of times in the dialogue but was able to pretty much keep up with it _ two accents and some convoluted logic. But, the ending was as expected. If was worth the price.
Two Shakespeare plays in two weeks was a bit much for Nancy. She's asked to hold off on Shakespeare for a while. Maybe it will be ok to see another production if we get to Stratford-on-Avon and see one in an authentic Shakespearian theater.
You may remember (and then again you may not remember) from our earlier letters that our north-facing window looks across Hotwells Road and up the hill to Clifton. The dining room table sits in front of this window and the computer is set up on the same table. Hotwells Road is a major street, the main port to the southwest from the city, and is busy night and day. Apartments on either side of the entrance to our complex block most of our exposure to the north so most of the noise is blocked. We eat our meals while watching the activity on Hotwells Road. It is mesmerizing at times.
The pictures on the right are the view as it used to be and as it is now
Thursday was a big deal. Rolls Royce has a big factory on the north end of town, Filton. They contributed the wings to the Concord and more recently to the new Airbus A380 Superjumbo plane. Thursday, the A380 did a fly-over in Bristol. It flew over the airfield at Filton and then over the Brunel Suspension Bridge
